


how good it feels to hold you

by apricotcake



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Depression, Emotional Constipation, Implied/Referenced Torture, Light Angst, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Slice of Life, Sort Of, married people [eyeroll], steve and bucky are stupid and bicker a lot they can’t help it, this is just like..word vomit lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 04:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30133914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apricotcake/pseuds/apricotcake
Summary: Wakanda is peaceful.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 12
Kudos: 55





	how good it feels to hold you

**Author's Note:**

> this has been collecting dust in my docs for over a year and though i gave it a little polish, it’s definitely been pulled out of my ass. enjoy!

Wakanda is peaceful.

The air is warm and dry, smells fresh and clean. Tastes crisp on Bucky’s tongue. It’s nothing like the pollution in Bucharest, in Washington. There are no clouds blocking out the stars, and no exhaust fumes in his nose, and he didn’t notice just how bad it was until he got here.

He tends to stick to the village, these days. Keeps far away from the city. It’s not because he can’t handle it, not really, but because—

Well, frankly, he thinks he could use some peace and quiet. 

Bucky would gladly take herding a bunch of goats, take the kids following him around all day. Hell, he’ll happily talk to them and answer all their questions. He’ll run after them if he’s asked to, break up their fights since, for whatever reason, they’ll listen to him when he says to cut it out.

He’ll take all of it over running back into the world guns blazing, and he’ll stay for as long as T’Challa will have him.

-

It wasn’t always this simple, though.

Waking up from cryo six months after being put in, waking to white coats and clinical touches was almost too much, almost enough to make him want to tear his way out of the medical wing, but then Steve was there, wrapping a blanket tight around Bucky’s shaking shoulders, running his hands up and down his arms like he could press warmth back into his body before they came up to either side of his face.

It was hard to make out what Steve was saying, but it was likely some sort of reassurance, and Bucky ran a trembling hand up and down his forearm, anchoring himself, muttering something like _I'm_ _still me, kid, I'm still here, not going anywhere_.

Or maybe he didn't say anything at all. Maybe he just thought he spoke. It was hard to tell in that moment.

Waking from cryo was the same whether it was in a HYDRA base or a lab in Wakanda. His ears were blocked, leaving him feeling like his head was forced underwater. His vision was blurry and his thoughts were disjointed mess, limbs shaking uncontrollably, teeth clacking together, but there was one thing that was glaringly obvious.

Every time his handlers woke him, every single time, he woke with dread crushing his throat, curdling the blood in his veins, but in the sleekness of the recovery room, the sight of the late morning sun through the floor-to-ceiling window, filtering in and warming you to the bone, he felt safe.

He couldn’t remember the last time he ever felt that. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt anything _close_ to that.

-

Bucky hated Steve’s apartment.

Even as high up as it was, it was so damn _noisy_. The area surrounding the building was busy like Bucharest was, like Dubrovnik and Athens and Gdańsk were. Hundreds of people, talking constantly, trucks and cars rushing by, and no matter how soundproof the place was, it couldn’t help enhanced hearing.

So, eventually, he stopped going entirely. 

T’Challa had already offered one of the homes in the village, and there was no point in Bucky sitting around twiddling his thumbs deciding, especially since Steve was halfway across the globe with Sam and Natasha. 

Besides, maybe the simplicity, the quiet would do him good.

“I know I’ve thanked you already,” Bucky said, walking side by side with T’Challa, who had hands clasped behind his back, footsteps in sync with Bucky’s own. “But I’ll have to do it again, Your Highness. This is...I don’t think I can ask you for anything else.”  
  
“We’re friends, James, are we not?” T’Challa had asked. In the setting sun, he almost looked golden.

Bucky nodded. “I’d like to think so, yeah.”  
  
“Then consider this a gift, a token of friendship,” T’Challa said, and a slight smile pulled at his mouth. “It’s only fair, since my sister has taken to making you her lab rat.”  
  
“Lab rat? Nah.” Bucky shook his head. “She’s a great kid. Honest. I don’t mind it, she reminds me of—”

 _Rebecca_ sat heavily on his tongue, has him biting her name back entirely.  
  
He hadn’t thought about Rebecca until that point. Not since the truth finally set in, since Steve broke the news you didn’t expect to hear.

Rebecca was alive, with a whole lot of grandkids and still living in Brooklyn, but the thought of facing her hurt. Still hurts. Hurts worse than anything. The only remaining Barnes sibling left, and the thought of seeing her only—

Bucky chewed on the inside of his cheek. “I have a sister,” he managed to say. “So it’s...I guess it’s nice, being around someone like that. Gets my head back into things. It’s amazing though, how she’s on top of everything, young as she is.”  
  
“I’ll be sure not to tell her you said so,” T’Challa said. “I doubt her head needs to grow any larger.”  
  
He laughed, then. Properly laughed, and it rattled its way out of his lungs like a cough. “Yeah, probably not,” he chuckled. “Probably not.”  
  
There wasn’t much talk after that, since T’Challa was escorted back to the palace by the Dora Milaje after a goodbye. 

Bucky liked him. Truly. He was a good man, and an honest one, too. That was hard to come by these days. The last few months showed that pretty clearly. He tried not to think about the mess with Stark, the Accords, of Zemo locked in Bucky’s former prison in Berlin.

It wasn’t that he was hiding from the truth. It wasn’t like that at all, but thinking about it didn’t help. Learning how to accept what happened would never be easy. There were bound to be highs and lows and days when the truth just wouldn’t hold. 

All he had was the thought that he didn’t want it. He was a puppet on strings, used for HYDRA’s gain and not his own.  
  
-

The problem was—

The problem _was_ that he still felt like he was meant to be someone else. He still felt like he was messing up somehow, and even though a part of him knew that wasn’t true, even though Shuri and the doctors kept telling him how great he was doing, there was a hole the center of Bucky’s chest that refuses to go away no matter what he did.

-

Sneaking around wasn’t one of his finer moments.

Yeah, okay, maybe he should have explained himself, explained that he needed some space. That he needed to be away from the world for a little while, do things on his own terms and no one else’s. Hence the reason he didn’t wear the prosthetic Shuri made for him—all sleek, black vibranium veined with gold. She asked for his help with it, his input, and wasn’t _that_ something. 

It was beautiful. Light and easy to move with. There were sensors that allowed him to feel the ghost of touch, for it to stretch and bend in a way that made it feel natural, made it feel like a part of his body. He’d almost said no to the gold, but when Shuri gave him a look and said, “But it’s so _pretty,”_ he gave in. 

The last thing he wanted was to disappoint her.

The best part of the arm, though, was that it was detachable. More choices. He thought he’d get lost in choices, then, and the thought of not being able to decide _what_ to choose was a trip.

When Steve, roughed up from whatever fight he was just in, showed up at the house, he looked around slowly before his eyes landed on Bucky. 

“Why didn’t you tell me you wanted a place of your own?” he asked.

Bucky shrugged at him. “I don’t know,” he said honestly, fingers drumming on the wall, looking anywhere Steve wasn’t. “I didn’t know I did until I got the guts to ask T’Challa about it.”

Steve’s jaw worked while he nodded, arms crossed tight. “I wish you would’ve called me,” he said, shrugged as something strange and cold sunk into Bucky’s gut. “Kind of a shock when I came back and saw all your stuff gone.”

“Oh, I get it,” Bucky shot back, surprising himself. He had half a mind to cross his arms, but remembered to clench his fist instead. “So, now I have to ask permission when I want to do something? Gotta run it by you first?”

Steve reeled, like he’d been slapped.

“You’ve been treating me with kid gloves since the minute we got here,” Bucky continued. He pushed his hand through his hair, pulled at the roots of it for a second before he forced himself to let go. Bad habit. One he broke a long while ago, and one he did a lot in the first few weeks after getting out of D.C. “It’s like—” he worked his jaw, bringing his eyes up to Steve’s. “Never mind. Just forget it.”  
  
“Why?” Steve asked, huffed and shook his head. “Bucky, if something’s on your mind—”  
  
“See that?” Bucky pointed a finger at him. Steve’s mouth snapped shut. “Right there. You’re allowed to get pissed off, you know. You don’t gotta roll over on your back like a dog or keep a constant eye on me. I can handle it. That was the point of all of this, for me to get back to—you don’t have to…”  
  
He struggled to find the words for a minute, and then, sharp and cold, they came out. “You lost your bite, you know that?”

“I _lost_ my _bite?”_ Steve repeated, brows knitting together, color rising high in his cheeks. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means exactly what I fucking said.” Bucky took a step closer. “Where’s the guy who never took any shit from me, huh? Where’s the guy who got spitting mad when I told him his plan for an op was stupid, or when I told him to leave a fight go before he dove into it anyway? It’s like...Christ, it’s like you’re giving up for good, Steve. I don’t know what the hell happened to you.”

It might have been too much.

No, it _was_ too much, and must have cut deep, because the air went very still and very stale, and stood that way when Steve put his hands on his hips and said, “Yeah, well, I do. You’re not the only one who’s had a hard time, Buck. Maybe I didn’t have it as bad as you, but that doesn’t mean any of it was easy. So, I’m real sorry for disappointing you.”

This had to happen. It was _bound_ to happen. They were both too wound up, with stress and anger and all the things they were both too yellow-bellied to talk about. 

It all bubbled to the surface, and it was obvious by the look on Steve’s face that this was the first time he’d ever said any of this out loud. His chest heaved, his eyes widening before they narrowed and he huffed a bitter laugh, more to himself than anything, but at what, Bucky wasn’t sure. He didn’t want to know.

Steve turned to leave, anyway.

“Oh, so _now_ you’re pissed at me?” Bucky called after him, and Steve stopped in his tracks. “If you are, you’d might as well get back in here! Finish the fight!”  
  
He turned around and came back inside, body wound tight. Predictable. “It’s not a fight, Buck,” he said, back to using goddamn kid gloves. Or maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he really didn’t want to fight at all. “I don’t want to fight with you. I mean it.”  
  
“Why not?” Bucky asked.

“What’s it gonna solve?” he asked, and shrugged helplessly. He looked so _tired._ “Yeah, we’re long overdue for a talk, I gotta admit it, but we’re not—we’re not gonna get anywhere like this. So, just let me ask you, and if you don’t wanna answer, that’s fine. Just tell me what’s goin’ on. Tell me if I can help.”

Bucky shut his eyes for a moment. “Christ, I don’t _know.”_ He rubbed his hand over his face. “Fixed as my brain is, it’s still all scrambled eggs, alright? I thought you wanted things to go back to the way they were before—us living together and whatnot, but I don’t think I can go back to the past, pal, I don’t think I could...”  
  
His fingers dug hard against the plaster. Angry as he was—at himself, at Steve, at the shitty hands they were both dealt—, he wasn’t going to put a hole through his wall.

“We ain’t who we were before,” he continued, strangled. “That’s all I mean. That doesn’t mean I don’t want what we had before, that doesn’t mean I’m calling it quits, but maybe I need to be out here for a little while, getting the rest of my head together in my own time before I think about having that back.”

His chest was heaving by the end, heart pounding hard. He felt alert and alive. Gone was the foggy feeling he’d grown so used to. Funnily enough, he felt like his younger self, even though he was the furthest thing from him. For once, his body felt elastic and awake.

“It’s nothing to do with...I don’t want you to think this is on you, because it ain’t. It ain’t, Steve,” Bucky said, too aware of the sweat beading at the back of his neck. “I don’t want you gone. I just need—I just need to—”  
  
“You gotta do what you gotta do,” Steve finishes, and when Bucky looked up, his expression was open, easier than what he expected. “I get it. I really do.”

He almost wanted to feel foolish for thinking he’d see the opposite from Steve, see anything but acceptance or forgiveness, but the truth of it was this: Bucky lived at the mercy of other people for decades. He wasn’t supposed to speak, wasn’t supposed to have any will of his own, and then everything changed at the drop of a hat.

All these choices were laid out, and he almost felt like he couldn’t take advantage of them. Like it was some kind of test. A trick.

But, he could. He was able to say yes and no, he was able to have a sense of agency and independence and say whatever the fuck he _wanted_ because who the hell was going to tell him otherwise?

“Look, I’m not—” Steve began. “I’m not making this about me, but I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Buck. I should’ve heard you out. Asked you what you wanted. If this is what you want, it’s what you want. I’m not here to force you into a box, or to, God, to make you be someone you’re not. That ain’t fair. I’m not who I used to be, either, so why the hell should anyone, especially me, make you do that?”

Bucky believed him. Of course he did. And the minute the words left Steve’s lips, it was like tension being siphoned out of his body. Steve must have saw it, must have felt it, because he took another step closer.

HIs hair was short, then, beard not even a beard yet. Just a layer of light blond stubble. His face was streaked with dirt. There was a cut, caked with blood, right over his brow, tac suit streaked with filth, meaning he came right off the Quinjet and straight to the village. Like he was on some kind of string.

That’s not completely true, though, since that string went both ways, wrapped around Steve’s and Bucky’s own and pulling them toward each other, no matter what the circumstances were.  
  
Bucky chewed on your lip, pushed off the wall and met Steve in the middle. 

“Alright, look, let’s just—we cleared the air, we know where we stand,” he said, trying to be reassuring. For who, he wasn’t sure. “Now quit standing over there like a kicked puppy and come here, huh?”  
  
A breath catapulted from Steve’s lips, relieved and maybe a little wet, and he nodded before he let himself be pulled in, arms wrapping around Bucky’s middle while his arm wound around Steve’s shoulders, hand rubbing between them, in some attempt to steel him. He smelled off. Like burnt rubber and sweat.

“Sorry.” Bucky had to force it out of your mouth. He can’t remember the last time he was put in the position of apologizing without groveling. “For...saying that shit to you. About rolling over. I didn’t mean it.”  
  
He felt Steve shake his head.

“Four S.H.I.E.L.D-issued therapists, and none of ‘em were that honest with me,” Steve said, breath warm against Bucky’s bare shoulder. “Guess someone had to say it, eventually.”

Who _was_ honest with him, then, aside from Sam and Natasha? 

That was when it became hard not to wonder how bad things were when Steve got off the ice, when he was thrust into a world completely alien to his own. God, if Bucky could have gotten out sooner, if he could have got his brain together and—

“You know, this place might big enough for two,” Bucky said close to his ear, and Steve pulled away for a second to look at Bucky in disbelief. “In case you ever get sick of your apartment, wanna stay over.”  
  
His mouth opened and closed, and he puffed out a sigh. “Bucky, I can’t just—”  
  
“Come on,” Bucky said, lighter than before. “I know you’ll be on my damn doorstep in a couple of days. I ain’t stupid, Rogers.”

“Will not,” Steve argued. “I’m not gonna get in your hair like that.”

But Steve was indeed on Bucky’s doorstep three days later, and the second Bucky saw him, he laughed right in his face.

“You just can’t stay away from me, huh?” Bucky said. “Am I really that handsome?”

“Oh, yeah,” Steve said, a surprised grin on his lips. “You’re a real dreamboat.”

“You know somethin’” Bucky murmured. “You’re such a sap, I bet you actually mean that.”  
  
The sun was beating down, hot and dry, even this late in the evening, but Bucky didn’t mind it much. Sometimes, it seemed like all he was ever able to remember was the cold. Soviet prisons and cryostasis pods and icy Brooklyn winters spent sleeping next to a scrawny body with a rattling chest.

It was nice, the heat. Cleansing. Burning the corruption out. Cauterizing the open wounds in his head, in his heart.

“So what if I do?” Steve asked.  
  
“Do you, though?” Bucky shot back.

Steve tilted his head, brows raised. His skin was glistening with sweat. At his collarbone, the junction of his chest. The bridge of his nose. Still turning red in the sun, that hasn’t changed. 

“Maybe,” Steve said. “What are you gonna do about it?”

It was a knee-jerk reaction. Bucky grabbed Steve by the chin with his thumb and forefinger, and pressed their mouths together.

He hadn’t kissed him in seventy-one years. Maybe he would have liked a little more fanfare with it, something that made his chest swell up or left him reeling, but it felt...

It felt right. The simplicity of it all. Bucky could smell the hot, dark earth under his feet and smell the flowers he didn’t know the names of. He could taste the salt of sweat on Steve’s mouth and feel the prickle of his stubble against his palm when he grabbed his face. 

It wasn’t putting a label on things. It wasn’t _anything,_ really. It was just a kiss. 

Steve leaned forward when Bucky broke away, but didn’t try to kiss him again. His fingers just slid up into Bucky’s hair, eyes flickering over him like he was checking for damage. 

Mayve he didn’t know how to do anything but that anymore. 

They hadn’t really ever had a chance to meet, to touch under normal circumstances. It was always rushed, even before Steve showed up in the weapons factory, before the war swallowed the two of them whole.

But, at that particular moment, it felt like time was turning to a solid, malleable thing. It felt like maybe the universe was finally fucking listening and giving them both a push toward freedom.

-

Life turned easy. Too easy, it seemed like. Even with everything Shuri did, even though Bucky’s brain was, for all intents and purposes, healed, it was impossible not to be hypervigilant.

It was impossible to let go of decades of blood, but it seemed he didn’t really have much of a choice. It wasn’t as if he could go running back to the past, since the past was the very thing he was trying to rid himself of, but sometimes—

Sometimes, the memories returned full-force.

Sometimes, it wasn’t even memories of HYDRA plaguing him, but memories of a foxhole in Italy, with two privates and one sergeant riddled with bullet holes, looking like two bloody chunks of swiss cheese. It left him chilled to the bone, thoughts scattered all over again, and honestly, Steve running all over the world, tying up loose ends, didn’t help much.

It didn’t help at all.

Him going out into the field on his own made Bucky feel...well, truthfully, it made him feel goddamn useless. How was he supposed just to ignore the niggling feeling that something could go wrong? How was he supposed to _go_ out there, anyway?

It wasn’t always about memories or triggering himself. Sometimes, it was about the fact that he wasn’t sure he knew how to fight anymore.

Or maybe, it _was_ because he still knew how, and the idea of losing control again was one he didn’t want to face.

-

The bitter taste of powerlessness, of cowardice, continued to rise up in his throat, to a point that he ended up getting his hands on clothes discreet enough for an op, a sleek rifle, and putting his prosthetic to use. He showed up at the airstrip just as Steve was prepared to board the Quinjet, armed to the teeth.

“Room for one more?” Bucky asked, and Steve looked at him like he’d grown a second head.

Technically, he wasn’t supposed to leave Wakanda at all. As a refugee, as a fugitive, that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. He was meant to stay away from the rest of the world

But, the mission was ultimately a success. 

Bucky stood perched up on top of the stronghold with his rifle, and picked off whoever was headed for Steve, for Sam and Natasha, through the skylight. He rigged the place with explosives. He blew it to hell. He and Steve dropped Natasha in Algeria, Sam in Portugal before heading back for Wakanda.

And then he didn’t get out of bed for two days.

-

Bucky didn’t go on any other missions after that, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t help. 

In Shuri’s lab, it was easy to be a getaway driver or a getaway pilot without even being out in the field, thanks to holographic projection.

When the drivers’ seat, the road appeared right before his eyes, he grinned, a burst of excitement in his veins as he muttered _holy cow_ , and then floored the gas pedal, heading straight for the armored trucks blocking Steve’s path.

-

Life revolved around more than therapy and labs and recovery. Slowly but surely. There were less tests. Less tip-toeing. More focus on just _being._

That was easier than he thought it would be.

He slept and ate. He helped his neighbors. He tended to the goats near the border. He took trips into the city, sometimes, and he let Shuri drag him into some greasy restaurant that was definitely not fit for a princess, but fit for everyone else. She didn’t seem to care, however.

She kept her phone pointed at Bucky in intervals, snickering before she showed him a video to him scowling into his food, but with his head shrunken and topped with neon pink, wiggling cat ears. He was the butt of a joke again. She did that a lot, the more he recovered. She made him read jokes on her phone (jokes you didn’t get), too, and got annoyed when he didn’t laugh, almost always saying _Bast! You really are old!_

Steve’s missions got longer, and more grueling. He disappeared for weeks at a time, but kept in touch as much as he could. Bucky tended to let him initiate phone calls and video chats, since he were never sure of what was going on wherever Steve was.

He kept saying they were getting close to the end. Of what, Bucky had no idea, but Steve said he knew he couldn’t yank Sam and Natasha from their lives anymore. They were caught up in this, too, and they needed safety. They needed to lie low for a little while, so Steve plans an op in Stuttgart on his own. Just a few weapons and Sharon Carter giving him the information he needed.

Steve never did missions alone. Bucky knew that, and almost went with him because of it.

He really should have went with him.

-

Wakanda is peaceful, until it isn’t.

Until Steve leaves for Stuttgart, and falls off the grid completely.

No communication. Not a single goddamn _word._ The trackers on his suit are useless, and break the day before everyone gets the gist that he might not come back at all.

-

The palace gardens are breathtaking up close. 

They’re full of lush greenery, and bright, beautiful flowers in purples and blues, blood-reds and buttery yellows, and it kind of reminds Bucky of the Wizard of Oz, when the film changed from sepia to color in the blink of an eye.

That doesn’t mean he’s ever been able to appreciate them, though. It seems like he’s only ever here when something is wrong.

He walked through them with Steve during that first week in Wakanda, beating around the bush until he finally mustered up the courage to tell him he was planning on going back into cryo, and now, Bucky walks side by side with T’Challa, the other man avoiding the obvious just as much as he is.

Their silences are usually easy. They’re never this heavy. 

“You think he made it?” Bucky asks, point blank, and the laugh that rattles out of him is bone dry and bitter. “I think you’re about the only person who’s not gonna patronize me and try to tell me to wait it out.”

T’Challa watches him for a moment, solemn. Bucky’s eyes go everywhere but his. Jumping to ear, his chin, the silver embroidery of his tunic.

“We are honest men, you and I,” T’Challa says. “With ourselves and the world. Captain Rogers, though, is a stubborn man, is he not?”  
  
“Stubborn’s a word for it,” Bucky says. “I could think of a lot of other, not-so-kingly ways to describe him.”  
  
“Then if he is everything you’re thinking now, why wouldn’t he be alive?” T’Challa asks.

Bucky says nothing, setting his jaw, “I don’t know,” he eventually answers. “Guess I’ve become the kind of guy who says the glass is half-empty, you know? Not easy to hope for the best anymore.”  
  
“James, I should be the one to tell you,” T’Challa says, and rests an unexpected hand on Bucky’s shoulder, stopping him in his tracks. His gaze is inescapable, roots Bucky to the spot. “If Captain Rogers is dead, revenge will not bring you peace. It won’t make him rest any easier.”  
  
“I know it won’t,” Bucky says, forcing himself not to look away. “But I doubt I’d be looking for peace, if that’s the case.”  
  
If anything, he’d be tying up his _own_ loose ends.

-

It takes twelve days before he hears anything. And if wasn’t for a frantic trill from his kimoyo beads, if it wasn’t for Shuri telling him to get to the border as fast as he can, if it wasn’t for a hoverbike and his speed, his adrenaline driving you forward, Steve would have died before anyone from the Border Tribe could even try to help him.

-

When Bucky gets to him, Steve crushes his hand in both his own. It has Bucky’s bones creaking but he can’t pay it any kind, not when Steve looks weak with blood loss, taking gurgling breaths and croaking, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry I took so...Buck, I’m…”

Like hell Bucky will let this be goodbye.

“Save it for later, Rogers,” he mutters, not unkindly as he hauls him up. “Save it for later.”

He forces himself to focus and pulls Steve onto the hoverbike, tearing back into the city.

-

Two half-healed gunshot wounds. Five cracked ribs. Dislocated shoulder. Torn muscle in the left leg. Feet left a mess, shoes in tatters, and the suit Steve left with is gone, replaced with clothes that are obviously not his own.

His entire body is scraped up, bruised and bloody, and Bucky watches the doctors work from the waiting room, from the other side of the glass wall as he grinds his teeth to dust.

He’s surprised when his burner phone buzzes in his pocket, and he fishes it out fast, not even bothering to look at the caller ID. “Yeah,” he says tiredly.

 _“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,”_ Sam says, a failed attempt at lightness. Bucky can hear the tension in his voice. There’s a brief beat of silence, and then, _“How is he?”_ _  
_  
“He’s breathing,” Bucky tells him, scrubbing the fingers of his left hand through his hair. He can almost feel it. Just a whisper of pressure between his fingers. “Anyone else would have dropped dead a long while ago, but it looks like being a stubborn piece of shit has its benefits. Alert the media.”

His voice wavers at the end. He hopes it isn’t noticeable.

Sam sighs slowly on the other end. _“About all we can ask for, I guess,”_ he says. _“What about you? How are you holding up?”_

Bucky breathes out, fingers twisting into the material of his pants. “I’m alive,” he mutters. “I just—it’s been a long couple of weeks. Almost got the guts to get out in the field a few times. Thought about going where we got the last signal from him and starting from there, but he showed up at the border right before I gave in. He was...Christ, if you saw him. I thought he was dead till he opened his eyes.”

 _“I should’ve been there with him,”_ Sam says. _“We were supposed to be, Nat and I, but Steve said he’d take care of it on his own. Wouldn’t even tell us what he was walking into or why.”_ _  
_ _  
_ Bucky shakes his head, even though Sam can’t see him.

“He didn’t want either of you running in there,” he says, tries his damnedest to be reassuring. “He’s...we’ve both asked enough of you.”

 _“Come on, we both know that’s bullshit,”_ Sam says. _“We_ _do what we do ‘cause we want to be here, and that’s all there is to it.”_

Bucky runs his hand over his face, breathing out slowly. “I—“

“Sergeant Barnes?” someone calls.

He whips around. A nurse, about a head shorter than him. stands at the doorway. “He’s all right,” she says, dark eyes cautious but kind. “Just asleep for now. You can visit him, if you like.”  
  
His mouth is dry. He can barely nod. “Everything’s okay, but I gotta go,” he says, already following the nurse down the hall. “Keep an eye open. Don’t get yourself killed.”

 _“Hey, give me some kind of credit. I do that well enough already,”_ Sam says, then adds, _“Keep an eye on him, huh?”_ _  
_  
“Yes, sir,” you say, and by the time you hang up. you’re being led into a much smaller room, bathed in moonlight, in warm, dim gold from the small lamp in the corner, stepping into Steve’s room alone.

-

He leans over Steve’s bed, worry clenching his stomach, and doesn’t _that_ feel familiar.

Even now, as big as Steve is, with his hair longer than it’s ever been and a beard he never would have been able to grow if not for the serum, it’s still hard to see him in a hospital bed.

The only real difference, in Bucky’s opinion, is that he can touch him without being sickened with guilt, without worrying about anyone noticing. So, now, he smooths Steve’s bangs back and presses his nose to his temple, lips brushing the side of his face. 

When he shuts his eyes, Bucky forces himself to focus. 

With his hearing as good as it is, he can just barely hear the beat of Steve’s heart, the ever so slight whistle in his breath from his fluid-filled lungs. 

Who would have thought that would make a comeback?

Bucky drops his hand to the center of Steve’s chest, feeling his pulse beneath his palm. It’s stronger than it was upon finding him. The drip he’s hooked up to must be helping him with hydration, giving him some fuel to burn. 

Fuel to burn means accelerated healing gets easier. Faster. His body is probably knitting itself back together from the inside out now, closing the stitches in his torso faster than they would for anyone else.

It’s hard not wonder whether or not Steve would have kept breathing if he never ran into Erskine. So many doctors told him he wouldn’t make it to twelve, then eighteen, then twenty-one, then thirty. One of them would have had to end up being right eventually, and a part of Bucky is glad neither of them ever had to face it in the long run.

Just then, a long set of fingers curl around Bucky’s wrist.

He leans back slowly, and Steve’s bruised, half-lidded eyes follow him in the dark. He’s thinner. Corded with muscle, like he hasn’t drank or eaten anything in days. 

“Hey, don’t wake up on my account,” Bucky says quietly. “You gotta rest.”

“Feel like I’ve been asleep for hours,” Steve croaks, but shuts his eyes anyway. Bucky rests his free hand over his forehead—another bad habit. Even now, he half-expect to find Steve too warm, on the verge of burning up. “Sorry. For everything. For disappearing, for...”

Every word sounds like a struggle, and because of it, Bucky shakes his head.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Bucky murmurs. He slides his fingers through Steve’s hair, back and forth, back and forth, just because he can. His chest twinges when Steve leans into it. “I’ll be nice to you for now. When you feel like yourself, though, I’m gonna kick your ass worse than whoever did this.”

It’s not a smile, but it’s close enough. Just the smallest pull to his mouth. “Yeah, well, I can probably take you.”

There’s something warm melting into his eyes, cutting through the ice that was clouding over them a second ago. Bucky tries not to think about what might have happened, but it’s a losing battle. He’s clenching his teeth hard enough to make his head ache.

But he can’t do this. Not now. Steve needs to heal without anyone hanging over his head. If he was willing to stay out of the way when it came to Bucky getting himself together, it’s only fair if Bucky does the same in return.

When he tries to move away, Steve grabs his left wrist. The ghost of his touch is there, just the faintest hint of pressure, and Bucky can’t help watching his fingers trace over the gold veins between the vibranium. 

“Wait,” Steve says, horribly raw. “Don’t go.”

Bucky bites his inner cheek, resisting the urge to hold on. “The nurses might kick me out,” he says. “You’re still under observation, big guy, serum or no serum.”

“I don’t care,” Steve says, voice raspier than before, giving Bucky wrist the feeblest squeeze. ”Stay, Buck. Please.”

If that doesn’t make Bucky’s chest feel like it’s cracking in two. He doesn’t want to jostle Steve too much. Doesn’t want to get in the way, but...

...the bed is big enough. 

He can squeeze in, if he moves the right way. He’s slept in worse conditions, with and without Steve. Shoved himself into a rickety bed to let the warmth of his own body bleed into Steve’s, or shoved closer to him in the bitter cold of the woods somewhere in Europe, when Bucky’s head was spinning too much to care if anyone saw.

“Yeah,” Bucky murmurs, swallowing thickly before he gets his hand back. “Yeah, okay, just...gimme a second.”

He slips out of his boots before padding across the cold floor and pulling himself onto the bed. He tugs the blanket further up, turning onto his side to face Steve and tucking his arm beneath the pillow, while Steve does the same. The moonlight’s turned his skin silvery, lashes dark against his face, bruises darker, Swollen. The breath he lets out is slower, deeper. Relieved, maybe.

“Better?” Bucky asks, voice barely above a whisper.  
  
“Yeah,” Steve murmurs. “Thanks.”  
  
From there, it’s easy to scoot closer, to slip a free hand, the right hand, to the one part of his face that isn’t injured. “God, look at you,” Bucky says, and Steve hums softly with it. “Takin’ up the whole damn bed. I know I didn’t miss that.”  
  
“Jerk,” Steve says. Always has to have the last word, even now. Even as beaten down as he is. “I got’n excuse.”  
  
“I know that, so go back to sleep,” Bucky says and wraps his arm around a pair of broad shoulders, nose pressing into Steve’s hair, which smells of smoke. It’s too easy to settle into, too familiar. “Heard enough outta you, anyway.”

The conversation seems to die there, but it’s not uncomfortable. Steve’s hand slides over Bucky’s side, breathing turning slow and deep after a minute or so, less wheezy than before.

Despite the comfort, Bucky doesn’t fall asleep for a long while. He stays awake until sunrise, watching the rise and fall of Steve’s shoulders, feeling his breath hot against his neck.

-

No matter how much things have improved, there’s always going to be the not-so-good days. Days where everything is in a jumble. Things from eighty years ago will feel like yesterday, and things from last month will feel like decades ago.

Being wrapped up with Steve now feels like tipping back into a half-remembered life. Like the clinical chill from the hospital isn’t from the hospital at all but rather a bitter draft stubbornly worming its way into the bedroom or a tent somewhere in a forest in Kiev. 

Hovering somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, Bucky’s fingers have half a mind to curl around a pocket knife or to rip him out of the sheets and peel for the sink to wash his face, get dressed before he’s late for work, but those parts of his life have king since ended. 

Now, there’s nothing to do but let his hands linger at the smooth muscle of Steve’s back, the warm skin flush against his palm.

-

Before Steve wakes up, Bucky slip out of the bed. He uses a spot on the touch screen on the wall, leaving a note to say he’ll be back.

It’s just to get his head together, that’s all.

He needs to grab Steve clothes to leave in, anyway, but his own clothes smell like a hospital, and he can’t fucking stand that. Normally, he’d go into the lake at the edge of the village, let the heat beat down on his back and let the coolness of the water calm him down for a while, but he needs more than that, so he takes an actual shower, scrubbing the sweat and exhaustion away until he feels a little more centered.

He’s tacky with water, but can’t bring himself to care. His hair will dry in the sun, as it always does, and for now, he pulls it out of his face and into a ponytail. He’s gotten good at doing it one-handed. He tries not to need the prosthetic. Tries not to depend on it. _Choices,_ he reminds himself. It’s not going anywhere, anyway. He’ll use it when he wants to.

For now, he needs to get a hold of himself.

He forces himself to sit down, head between his towel covered legs, hands in his hair. Steve is alive. He’s alive and out of harm’s way and there’s no need to be so goddamn cut up about it.

Still—

No, he can save this for later. He has all the time in the world to let it out, and to squeeze an answer out of Steve, to figure out why Stuttgart was so important. Once they’re both good and ready.

-

Steve pretends not to notice that his clothes go missing whenever he stays over. 

Bucky doesn’t think he minds, anyway. He leaves them here for convenience, and no matter what, Steve sticks to the same ugly shirts and jeans as always, or yanks plain t-shirts straight out of those packages of three, and wears those without even ironing them. 

Bucky’s no prize himself, but come _on_. 

He’s not complaining about how Steve looks in them, but then again, Bucky think Steve would have dressed like this had they grown up in this century. Been as low-maintenance as possible. Bucky tries to stick to what’s easy, too, though, since sometimes, he can hardly make himself to get dressed at all. 

He cut or pinned the left sleeves off most of the shirts Steve bought him for convenience, and only left some of them intact. Left the short sleeved t-shirts and the tanks intact, too. The jackets are fine, would work well to hide the prosthetic if he had to do so. It’s too warm here for them, and it’s not like Bucky has any plans to venture into the snowy mountains of the Jabari tribe any time soon.

Besides, he’s sick to death of the cold.

-

Steve’s already back to himself, one step away from being discharged by the time Bucky gets back to the hospital. A little banged up, sure, but ultimately better.

He’s sat up on the edge of the bed and wearing soft grey scrubs. His face is still bruised, but it’s gone yellowish-brown, nothing like the deep purple from last night, the swelling all but gone.  
  
“Well, look at you,” Bucky says when he steps closer, dropping a bag of semi-stolen clothes on the floor. “New man.”

Steve shrugs, movements liquid. His ribs must have healed up by now. Legs, too. It’s still hard for Bucky to wrap his head around it sometimes, even though their bodies are virtually the same. 

“Something like that, yeah,” Steve says, eyes the bag before he looks up. “Thanks, for the clothes.”  
  
Something’s off. The air feels suffocating, and there’s something in the bottom of his eyes that doesn’t sit right with Bucky by any means. 

He arches a brow. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, Buck,” Steve says, hackles raising, like he’s been already asked. Maybe he knew it was coming. Knew Bucky would practically smell it off of him. “I mean it. I’ve got the all-clear. I can leave whenever I’m ready.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Bucky says, and let it linger for a second, force Steve to see he’s not as slick as he’d like to be. “But, sure. Yeah. Get dressed and we’ll get the hell out of here.”

-

These days, Bucky doesn’t mind Steve’s apartment so much. 

He doesn’t mind the sleekness of it, or the cool, dark wood floors beneath his feet, but the fact that it still smells and feels new after almost a year, still has barely any furniture or warmth to it, rubs him the wrong way.

Sure, that might be because he isn’t in it often. Sure, that’s because he’s been away almost constantly, and when he isn’t out of Wakanda, he tends to stick around the village, hanging around until late, or occasionally staying the night, sticking to his side of the bed unless Bucky moves to close the distance between them.

And then Bucky realized the difference. The hut feels lived in, and Steve’s apartment does not.

It’s empty and cold, and it’s hard not to wonder if everywhere he’s ever lived was like this. Manhattan, D.C., Wakanda, the cabin S.H.I.E.L.D stuffed him into when he woke up. Where the hell was Carter for that? Was she already in a nursing home, slipping away? God, it’s no wonder the whole goddamn agency went under after she retired. 

The couch feels stiff under Bucky’s back, but he tries to slouch into it anyway. “You ever gonna liven this place up a little? It’s boring as hell,” he calls, turning to watch Steve in the kitchen. “I mean it, it’s like…”

He doesn’t turn around. His fingers drum against the handle of the refrigerator, but he doesn’t open it. His shoulders are tensed up, raised up to his ears, and that’s a familiar sight. He’s been doing that for as long as Bucky can remember, which is pretty damn long now.

“Steve,” Bucky says, and Christ, he can hear it in his own voice, that he’s doing the same thing he accused Steve of forever ago—treating him with kid gloves. Walking on eggshells. When did they ever do that?

Bucky pulls himself up off the couch and walks into the kitchen, leaning across the counter, braced on his arm. 

“Steve,” he presses, a little louder than before, and that makes him raise his eyes. Bucky’s brows knit together. “What the hell happened out there? Quit choking it down and tell me.”

It’s better than asking if he’s okay. That’s never worked, because he’ll immediately deflect. Steve’s a soldier, too. The only way to get something out is to ask for the closest thing to a report.

His hand slips down and he shrugs, shaking his head. 

“It got messy,” Steve says tightly. “It was supposed to be quick, like I said. Two, three days at most, and most of that was supposed to be scoping out, coming up with a strategy then and there, since it was so sensitive. It’s the last European HYDRA branch, last of Rumlow’s goons from Lagos, and it was the best hidden compound I’d seen so far.”

Bucky’s stomach twinges. Even now, he wishes he could’ve gotten his own hands on Rumlow when he had the chance, wishes he could have broke his jaw open, shut him up for good before he blew himself to hell, almost taking Steve with him.

“I mean it when I say that was the last of them,” Steve says. “I didn’t have a choice but to finish this and I had to finish it alone. Anything else from here is small potatoes but, hell, it had to be done. It had to, no matter how it turned out.”

He breathes out in a rush before he rubs his hands over his face, leans forward with it, like something is physically weighing him down. He grabs the edge of the countertop in a white-knuckled grip. Hard enough that it has to hurt him.

Bucky thinks about prying his fingers away, thinks about moving closer, but he doesn’t do any of it, because Steve is opening his mouth to speak again, eyes tired and fixed somewhere in the distance.

That look is far from unfamiliar. Bucky knows it because he’s seen it on Steve too many times. In the midst of a firefight in a war long since over, seen it on his own fucking face in a grimy bathroom mirror in Bucharest. 

“I don’t know how, but they got wind that someone was coming. They were armed to the teeth the night I was supposed to go in, so I waited for hours. Gave it time till they let their guard down,” Steve continues. “It worked, for the most part, got all of them before they could get out. Got what I needed, passed it onto Sharon, but from there—“ he flattens his mouth into a tight line. “I knew there were a couple of agents left alive, and one...one recognized me. I knew they’d be on my tail because of that, so I took the long way back and kept changing my way of getting here. It’s why I turned my comms off, ditched my phone. I got as far as Tangier before they caught up with me, and that’s where it...that’s when it went south. Woke up in the back of a truck headed for God knows where, probably back into Europe, but I escaped. There were eight guys in total, and I killed all of them.”

 _You should have gone with him,_ Bucky thinks. If he’d gone to Germany, none of this would have fucking _happened._

“I was worse off than I was when I got here. I patched myself up as best as I could, and got the hell out, found someone with a jet willing to get me here, and I gave him almost all the emergency cash I had on me to make him say yes. He got me close enough that I could get on a bus and then I just...I just kept walking, kept pushing myself further until I could at least get to the border. I wasn’t healing right ‘cause I had no fuel to burn, and that’s on me. Stitches kept reopening, but I didn’t stop.”

He looked damn near dead when Bucky found him, grey even in the sun. The circles under his eyes were as deep as they are now, face streaked with dirt, blood blooming dark through his shirt. 

“So, all of that,” Bucky grits out. “Almost getting yourself killed for, what, taking down a few goons?”

“They weren’t a few goons, Bucky,” Steve argues. “Those guys have more than enough pull to start HYDRA’s dirty work all over again.”

“Steve,” Bucky pushes. “People like that don’t just disappear, least of all any rats leftover from HYDRA. It just won’t happen. There’s no way for any of us to know they’re done for good.”

“Well, what’s wrong with trying to make sure they are?” Steve snaps. “I’ve never told you this is the key, but I’m telling you now, this might be the way to really topple them over. From here, everyone else can take over. The data leak helped, but there’s still so much to cover, so much no one knows about, and I think…” he breathes out slowly. “I think everything’s gonna work out for us now.”

“Work out for us _how?”_ Bucky snaps, slamming it down on the counter. “Whatever you found, was it worth me finding you half-dead at the fucking border? For Christ’s sake, Steve, if I didn’t get to you when I did—”  
  
“Just hear me out,” Steve says. “Please, Buck. It was...if I didn’t get this—”  
  
“So, tell me what it is. Enough with your speeches. I want a goddamn answer.” Bucky steps closer to him, heart pounding. It’s sinking in, how easily Steve could have died, with a bullet fired into his skull by, or from of blood loss in the middle of nowhere. 

Or he could have been taken.

If that happened, Bucky can’t imagine what he would have done. Maybe he would have given into the poison stirring deep in his guts. Let it take over until he pulled Steve out of wherever they took him, dead or alive, and if it happened to be the former, let the anger simmering inside take over and leave what was left of the bastards in pieces.

“It was a lot of old files,” Steve says quietly. “Tape recordings, pictures, notes. All on you, and of you.”

That’s enough to suck all the air out of the room.

Bucky’s throat feels dry, blood cold in his veins but it’s...he’s not going to give into the instinct to flee from the thoughts. He’s faced the memories of HYDRA, of every bastard who ripped him apart and put him back together again, too many times now.

So, he stands his ground. He swallows down the urge to fall into the hole he’s been circling around since Steve went missing, and keeps his eyes forward.

“Story is,” Steve says slowly. “Sharon’s the one who finds them, and when the time is right, she’ll bring them to the higher ups, and Buck, that’ll be another piece of evidence for them. They’ll know you didn’t have any control over what happened, any of it. _That’s_ what was in Stuttgart. Hell, they were just—“ he throws his arms in the air, exasperated. “They were just sitting in a box collecting dust with a hundred other papers like it didn’t even _matter._ Like you were just—“

“Steve,” Bucky says, worn, and lets his eyes fall shut. “I know. You know I know, but it’s...pal, it’s _over._ It’s done.”

He’s never said the words out loud until now, and God, now he wants to scream it until his throat is scraped raw. _I’m free, I’m free, I’m free._

Steve’s chest is heaving, like the realization has hit him, too. “Even if I didn’t make it out,” he says. “Even if I...look, I wanted this for _you_ . If I could help you get a clean slate, a _real_ clean slate, I couldn’t risk passing it up. I couldn’t.”

It’s not easy to hear. Steve risking his life the way he did, getting himself caught and nearly killed or worse, but he had a reason. He didn’t want to track the information down to burn it or dispose of it, it was to prove your innocence, even now. Even after everything he’s risked.

”You didn’t—“ Bucky bites his inner cheek. “You didn’t read any of it, look at any of it, did you?”

Steve shakes his head, and though Bucky can see he’s telling the truth, there’s still a paleness to him that wasn’t there before. “No,” he mutters. “No, I wouldn’t have done that.”

There are too many thoughts racing through Bucky’s head, good and bad. He can’t even process the idea of not needing to hide anymore. At least, not now.

All he can do to anchor himself is bring his hand to the back of Steve’s neck, tugging him closer before he can stop himself.

“Just promise me something.” It’s rough and low in Bucky’s throat. “One thing.”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes, and he’s rigid all over. “Yeah, Buck, anything.”

“Tell me you mean that,” Bucky says. He slides his fingers up into Steve’s hair, threading them in, maybe too tightly. “I’m serious, Rogers. Swear to me.”

Steve nods, just barely. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”  
  
“If there’s anything else to take care of after this, I won’t stop you, but after that, you’re finished,” Bucky says firmly, and looks Steve square in the face, not giving himself a chance to look away. “I’ve been watching that goddamn shield eat you alive since the minute it was handed to you. You don’t even have it anymore but it’s still got you by the throat, giving you this fucking Atlas complex, and it’s high time you give it up for good because it’s—”  
  
It sticks in his throat. He’s surprised Steve hasn’t said a word, but from the look on his face, it might be sinking in. He might actually _listen_ for once.

“This life, it’s gonna kill you one of these days,” Bucky continues, and hated how fucking _wrecked_ his voice is, but he can’t stop now. Like _hell_ he’s going to stop. “And I ain’t gonna sit here and watch you die. I almost came to Stuttgart with you, and if I did, maybe this would have been easier, but you...if it’s gonna stop for me, it’s gotta stop for you, too. If I’m done, you’re done.”

Steve breathes out like he’s been punched—hard and fast and painful, and he’s dipping his head down, nodding. He’s paler than he was when he left, the blotchy tan on his face all but gone. It’s hard not to wonder how long Rumlow’s guys actually had him, wonder if they managed to rough him up worse than how Steve initially looked.  
  
That was the thing about accelerated healing. It never showed any evidence. 

Stark’s steel boot nailing Bucky in the face would have killed anyone else, or damaged their brain for good. All it did was give him a nasty concussion for all of six hours, gone by the time the Quinjet landed in Wakanda. The break in his nose, his fractured cheekbone, were also completely healed.

“I know,” Steve croaks, and Bucky is about to wonder why before he gets a look at his face, eyes already bloodshot and wet, chest spasming hard. “Yeah. I know. I know, and I’ve been wanting that. So bad, you gotta know that, it’s just been—sorry, I just—”  
  
Bucky’s insides twist so hard it’s almost painful. He can count on one hand the times he’s actually seen Steve cry, or been allowed to see him cry, and even when he did, it wasn’t like _this._

There’s no hesitation when Bucky brings his hand to his cheek, pressing closer. “Hey,” Bucky says, softer than before. “Come on, look at me.” 

He’s trying to be gentle. Soothing. Even though all he’s capable of these days is being angry, but at least he’s angry _for_ Steve, and not _at_ him.

“Steve.” Bucky rubs his thumb over his cheek, under his eye, feeling the tender thinness of it catch on his calloused skin, gone rough from labor. God, he wants to do more, run his lips over his cheek, maybe. The side of his face. The line of his jaw, but they haven’t crossed any lines yet. Neither of them have initiated anything, save for a kiss that feels like it happened a century ago. “Throw me a line here, pal, don’t shut down on me.”

Steve shakes his head, and Bucky isn’t sure if it means _I’m not_ or nothing at all. It’s like whatever he really wants to say is stuck in his throat, face twisted up like he’s in pain, like he has a bullet in his stomach, doubling him over with his fingers digging hard into your shoulders, a bullet from the Soldier’s gun _blood blooming over his torso—_

Bucky shuts his eyes tight, just for a second. _Not now._ He can’t do this now.

The thing about Steve was this. He knew how to run his mouth, sure, he knew how to give a speech if the situation demanded it, but when he was alone, he was never good with words. He’s always had an issue with sounding out what was bothering him unless he was spitting mad, unless he was telling someone off.  
  
“You know.” Steve’s voice is just as rough, maybe worse, and he’s not looking at Bucky now. Not really. His gaze jumps from his nose to his forehead to his chin, anywhere but his eyes. “I never thought about...I never thought about stopping. Ever. I wanted to, but I always just figured it wasn’t gonna be me, who chose to stop. I always thought I’d—” Steve’s hand comes to the back Bucky’s neck, thumb kneading gently at the constant knot there. “I didn’t think I’d have this. Or have it with you.”

That makes _Bucky_ feel like a bullet’s lodged in his gut. Makes him breathe out hard and fast. “Yeah,” he rasps before he can stop himself, swallowing thickly. “Yeah, you can say that again.”

It felt like even if they managed to make it together, it wouldn’t have been for long. Like it would have ended in bullets and blood, but maybe it doesn’t have to now. 

Maybe they can have a taste of the life Bucky’s been wanting since he remembered it was possible to want anything at all.

Steve laughs, but it’s wobbly. He sniffs hard, breathes out shakily, braced against Bucky like he might fall down. 

“Look,” Bucky starts, but trails off when Steve drags him in close, arms wrapping around him so tight he can’t fully breathe in. Steve’s holding on like he’s not the one who almost died in the middle of nowhere, but Bucky can’t bring himself to mind right now. His skin’s been itching for this, a spidering, cold crawl of a lack of sensation.

He squeezes his eyes shut tight, and tries to breathe Steve in without it catching in his throat. He smells like the sharp tang of a hospital, like cotton and sweat and Bucky wished he wore his fucking prosthetic so he could cling back tighter, crush everything that’s been boiling up inside Steve and himself, right out of their bodies.

“You’re done,” Bucky tells him, voice muffled against the side of his face. He can feel Steve’s heart thundering against his own. “You’re _done,_ and so am I. Nothing else for either of us to do.”  
  
Bucky should feel the realization crashing down on him, but he’s already felt it. He felt it while he tried to come down from a brain-shattering nightmare in an alleyway in Chicago that smelled of piss and death and felt himself shake apart with it, knowing HYDRA was behind him for good this time, even if they dragged him back kicking and screaming.

Maybe, Steve’s doing the exact same thing now, but with S.H.I.E.L.D, with the mantle of Captain America, with whoever he became after it. Sweating it out like an illness. Like a fever.

Bucky didn’t have anyone, then. Stranded and suddenly cut loose in a world he struggled to grasp at the time, left with a head that wasn’t screwed on straight.

But, Steve doesn’t have to go through it alone. Bucky will be damned if he lets him go through this alone.

He pulls him in as close as he can, pressing his nose into the warm skin of Steve’s neck, and focuses on their mingled breaths. Hot and wet and almost in sync in their fervor. He feels a little hysterical, stretched thin and in too many directions, unsure of which to run into.

“You know, my offer still stands,” Bucky murmurs. “Got room for one more in the village if you wanna relocate for good.”  
  
Bucky isn’t sure if Steve laughs or sobs. It doesn’t matter. Either way, he holds onto him tighter.

-

Bucky doesn’t dare think about leaving. The day stretches on, and on, and when he finally lays down to sleep in the barren room across from Steve’s, it’s impossible to get comfortable.

He’s done everything he _should_ do to get more relaxed. He tried to level his breathing, tried meditating, even tried the tea collecting dust in Steve’s cupboard and while it tastes just fine, it doesn’t loosen him up the way a nightcap would have, and he’s long since kissed the days of feeling tipsy goodbye.

He’s just...restless. Skin crawling with it. His body doesn’t seem to know what the hell it wants, tugging him in hundreds of different directions until he finally rips the covers off and storms for the door before tugging it open.

Steve is standing there poised to knock, and then he startles at the same time. There’s something skittish, riddled with nerves permeating around him.

“Hey,” he says, and tries to give something like a smile, but it’s still tired. As tired as it was earlier.

“Hey yourself,” Bucky says. “What are you coming to bother me for?”

For a moment, Steve says nothing at all. He lingers in the doorway, changed into pajamas with damp hair hanging limply over his brow. He stands there looking almost sheepish before he finally says, “I was just seeing if you were up for some company.”  
  
Bucky drums his fingers on the door knob, watching and waiting before finally moving aside. “Sure,” he says carefully. “Yeah.”

He moves aside as Steve steps in. The air is still as Bucky closes the door, not uncomfortable by any means, but...off. Charged.

“You doing okay?” Steve asks, stepping further into the room, hands in the pockets of his sweatpants.

Bucky arches a brow. “Are you?” he shoots back.

Steve smiles softly, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Better,” he eventually admits, nodding as he exhaled. “Little better, yeah.”

He still has a bruise on the side of his face, partially obscured by his beard. Bucky resists the urge to reach out for him again, to assess the damage a little further.

Instead, he walks past him, sitting on the side of the bed. He runs his tongue over his teeth, prickly with discomfort.

Just as he prepares to speak, Steve does the same, and the breathy laugh that punches out of him is contagious. 

A slow smile creeps up Bucky’s mouth. “Go ahead,” he says.

“Nah,” Steve says. “Wasn’t important.”

“Not like I had some grand soliloquy prepared,” Bucky says wryly. “Just planned on asking if you wanted to sit.”

Steve smiles from the corner of his mouth. “Soliloquy,” he repeats, sitting beside Bucky. “That’s a big word, Buck. Where’d you get that?”

“Oh, very funny,” Bucky deadpans, aware of the way Steve bumps their shoulders together. “You’d think you’d get some new material after seventy years.”

“Hey,” Steve says, offended. “I was frozen for most of that time.”

“Excuses, excuses,” Bucky says, then turns to face him completely, back against the headboard. “Oh, here’s a fun new word for you. Zygon. Got that one from Words With Friends.”

“Buck,” Steve chuckles. “I’m almost as old as you are, and _I_ know no one plays that anymore.”

Bucky shrugs. “Lang does.”

That gets Steve’s attention, and his brows skyrocket. “You and Scott play Words With Friends?” he asks in utter disbelief.

“Sure do,” Bucky says, and presses his foot against Steve’s knee for emphasis. “And he loses every. Single. Time.”

-

It’s slow and easy after that, carrying on like the first half of the day didn’t happen at all. Bucky thinks they both use a little reprieve for now. Too many decisions, too many revelations, too many emotions roiling between them. It left him feeling about as wiped out as Steve looks.

So, talking doesn’t last very long, but that doesn’t matter. It just turned out Steve didn’t want to be alone, and Bucky would be lying if he said he didn’t feel the same way.

On top of that, it might be one of the most peaceful nights he’s had in decades.

Maybe nothing is truly _good_ just yet, maybe the air hasn’t fully cleared, but it’s enough for now, in Bucky’s opinion to just be for now, to listen to the sound of Steve’s breathing mingled with the whisper of the television Bucky can barely work, and that alone is only further confirming that he might be warming up to being something more again.

 _Again._ Did it end? Of course, he remembers the starting point, being tangled up with Steve on his bedroom floor on Bucky’s seventeenth birthday and continuing throughout the war up until the mission in the Alps, and that wasn’t anyone’s choice.

Even after being cornered by Steve in Bucharest, there was no time to discuss that part of the past. No time to think about it, and hell, the kiss by Bucky’s hut...

The kiss was odd. It was impulsive and felt good. Better than good, but there was an unspoken agreement to just...not talk about it.

Yes, they sleep in the same bed despite that, yes, touches aren’t as tentative, but they haven’t crossed any other lines. That feels familiar. 

What are they now? Friends? Lovers? Partners? Bucky isn’t sure what to call it anymore. Steve is just _Steve_. That’s all there ever was and is to it.

Through this, he feels himself drifting, blinking awake every so often, and by the fifth or sixth time he wakes, the room is dark and Steve has turned onto his side, back to Bucky, breaths slow and deep.

It doesn’t take much for Bucky to come close, to wrap his arm around Steve from the chest up, careful not to jostle any lingering injuries too much, and press their bodies closer together, nose nestled against Steve’s nape.

What is surprising is the hand that covers Bucky’s, warm fingers lacing with his own, squeezing gently, the body pressing further back against him. _Stay close,_ Steve seems to say.

So, that’s exactly what Bucky does.

-

In the morning, Bucky wakes with his head clear and his vision sharp.

Sunlight streams in from the windows and eased the knots from his neck. He knows there’s a tinting feature for the windows, but he likes feeling the sun on his face, and he knows Steve likes it, too. Whenever he comes down to the village, he rolls up his sleeves or pulls his shirt off and soaks up as much of it as he can, even when he gets burnt.

Maybe they can spend the day like that if Steve’s healed up. They’ll melt in the sun for a few hours or slip into the pond a little ways away from the hut, let the water cool them off from the inside out.

Whatever happens from here, at least they’ll have that.

**Author's Note:**

> wanted to get this out before fatws which is in like AN HOUR??? IM SO EXCITED BYE


End file.
